Thank GOD--He's so good. His love never quits!

Psa 118:1  Thank GOD because he's good, because his love never quits. 
Psa 118:2  Tell the world, Israel, "His love never quits." 
Psa 118:3  And you, clan of Aaron, tell the world, "His love never quits." 
Psa 118:4  And you who fear GOD, join in, "His love never quits." 
Psa 118:5  Pushed to the wall, I called to GOD; from the wide open spaces, he answered. 
Psa 118:6  GOD's now at my side and I'm not afraid; who would dare lay a hand on me? 
Psa 118:7  GOD's my strong champion; I flick off my enemies like flies. 
Psa 118:8  Far better to take refuge in GOD than trust in people; 
Psa 118:9  Far better to take refuge in GOD than trust in celebrities. 
Psa 118:10  Hemmed in by barbarians, in GOD's name I rubbed their faces in the dirt; 
Psa 118:11  Hemmed in and with no way out, in GOD's name I rubbed their faces in the dirt; 
Psa 118:12  Like swarming bees, like wild prairie fire, they hemmed me in; in GOD's name I rubbed their faces in the dirt. 
Psa 118:13  I was right on the cliff-edge, ready to fall, when GOD grabbed and held me. 
Psa 118:14  GOD's my strength, he's also my song, and now he's my salvation. 
Psa 118:15  Hear the shouts, hear the triumph songs in the camp of the saved? "The hand of GOD has turned the tide! 
Psa 118:16  The hand of GOD is raised in victory! The hand of GOD has turned the tide!" 
Psa 118:17  I didn't die. I lived! And now I'm telling the world what GOD did. 
Psa 118:18  GOD tested me, he pushed me hard, but he didn't hand me over to Death. 
Psa 118:19  Swing wide the city gates--the righteous gates! I'll walk right through and thankGOD! 
Psa 118:20  This Temple Gate belongs to GOD, so the victors can enter and praise. 
Psa 118:21  Thank you for responding to me; you've truly become my salvation! 
Psa 118:22  The stone the masons discarded as flawed is now the capstone! 
Psa 118:23  This is GOD's work. We rub our eyes--we can hardly believe it! 
Psa 118:24  This is the very day GOD acted-- let's celebrate and be festive! 
Psa 118:25  Salvation now, GOD. Salvation now! Oh yes, GOD--a free and full life! 
Psa 118:26  Blessed are you who enter in GOD's name-- from GOD's house we bless you! 
Psa 118:27  GOD is God, he has bathed us in light. Festoon the shrine with garlands, hang colored banners above the altar! 
Psa 118:28  You're my God, and I thank you. O my God, I lift high your praise. 
Psa 118:29  Thank GOD--he's so good. His love never quits! 

And they shall reign for ever and ever — Rev_22:5

The Reign of the Saints
And they shall reign for ever and ever — Rev_22:5

I venture to say that with this expression there creeps in a touch of unreality. It is difficult to associate thrones with the immortal life of our beloved dead. We can readily picture them as serving, for they loved to serve when they were here. Nor, remembering how they searched for it, is it hard to believe that they see His face. But to conceive of them as reigning and having crowns and sitting upon thrones introduces a note of unreality. For many of them that would not be heaven. It would be the last thing they would desire. For they were modest folk, given to self-effacement, haunting the shadowy avenues of life. And if individuality persists, they will carry over into another world those lowly graces that made us love them here. We can always think of an Augustine as reigning. But the saints we knew and loved were seldom Augustine's. They were gentle souls, shrinking from publicity, perfectly happy in the lowest place. It is hard to see how natures such as that could ever be quite at home in heaven, if in heaven their calling were to reign. But the Scripture cannot be broken. It is revelation, not conjecture. If there is anything in it that offends the heart, we may be certain the error lies with us. So I believe that the difficulty here and the jarring note that grates upon the sensitive lie in our wrong ideas of reigning.

That there is something wrong in these popular ideas is demonstrated by one forgotten fact. It is that the saints do not begin to reign when they pass into the other world. If kingship were confined to heaven, the nature of it would lie beyond our understanding. It would be one of those things that eye had never seen, which God hath prepared for them who love Him. But kingship is not confined to heaven, according to the concept of the Scriptures. It is a present possession of the saints. We do not read that Christ will make us kings. We read that He hath made us kings (Rev_1:5). Loosed from our sins in His own blood, we begin to reign in the moment of redemption. And the reign in glory, which troubles meek souls, is not something different from that, but that enlarged and expanded to its fullness. This harmonises with the general mind of Scripture in the glimpses it affords of immortality. It pictures it as a completion rather than as a contradiction. It takes such human things as love and service and tells us that in the land beyond the river such beautiful graces are going to be perfected. In what sense, then, do the saints reign here? How is the humblest child of God a king? There is no throne here, nor any visible crown, nor any of the insignia of regality. If we can grasp the kingship of believers amid all the infirmities of time, we have the key to understand the mystery of their reign forever and forever.

Our Reign Will Not Be in the Earthly Sense
And it is just here that a word of Christ's casts a flash of light upon our difficulty. "The kings of the Gentiles," He says, "exercise lordship, but it shall not be so with you." Are not all our common thoughts of kingship taken from the royalty of such monarchs? Does not their state and the insignia of it fill our minds when we meditate on reigning? And Jesus tells us that this whole concept, gathered from the facts of earthly lordship, is alien now and alien forever from the lordship and dominion of His own. He that would be greatest must be least. The monarch is the servant. Kingship is not irresponsible authority: it is love that gives itself in glad abandonment. It is love that goes to the uttermost in service just as He went to the uttermost in service and so reigns forever from the cross. It is thus a Christian mother reigns amid the restless rebellions of her children. It is thus that many a lowly toiler reigns over the hearts and lives of everyone around him. It is thus the Salvation Army lassie queens it over the rough and reckless slum though she carry no sceptre in her hand and her only crown be the familiar bonnet. The kingship of believers here has nothing whatever to do with pagan lordship. At the command of the Lord Jesus we must banish such concepts from our mind. The only kingship of the saints on earth is that of the glad abandonment of love in an unceasing and undefeated service.

Now it seems to me that all our trouble vanishes when we carry that thought into the other world. If this be reigning, then in the life of heaven our dear ones will be perfectly at home. We would not have them other than we knew them when they were with us here amid the shadows. The thought of heaven would be too dearly purchased if it robbed us of their lowly, quiet gentleness. But if the sway they won over our hearts on earth, perfected, be their eternal reigning, then they can still reign and be the same. Reigning will not alter them. It will not render them unrecognisable. It will not touch that lowly loving service which made them so inexpressibly dear. It will only expand it into fullest kingliness, setting a crown of gold upon its head. They shall reign forever and forever.

CHRIST AS KING

                                                             
JESUS AS KING

"Pilate therefore said to Him, Are You a King, then? Jesus answered, You say that I am a King."-- Joh_18:37.

OUR LORD'S Royalty is suggested by the opening paragraphs of St. Matthew's Gospel, which emphasises His descent from David; the wise men asked for Him who is born King of the Jews, and Herod feared His rivalry. All through the Gospel narrative, stress is constantly laid on the fact that He was King of the Jews and King of Israel, and it ends with the regal claim that all power and authority in heaven and earth had been entrusted to Him.
Jesus never abated His claim to Kingship, but always made it clear that His ideal was very different from that which was current among the Jews. His conception of Royalty was borrowed from Psa_72:4, where the King is said to judge the poor of the people, and save the children of the needy. It was the collision between His idea of Kingship and that of the Pharisees, which brought Him to the Cross.

For us the lesson is clear. We must begin with the recognition of the royal claims of Christ to our homage and obedience. He only becomes Savior, in the fullest meaning of the word, when He has been enthroned as King in our hearts. With invariable precision He is described, first as Prince, then as Savior, and that order cannot be altered without injury to our soul-life (mind,willpower and emotions) (Act_5:31; Rom_10:9; Heb_7:2). 

 The whole content of the New Testament is altered when we view the Royalty of Christ as the Chief Cornerstone, not only of that structure, but of the edifice of character.
Let us not be afraid of  Christ as King.  He is meek and lowly, and full of understanding and fully aware of the problems of our life. He shared our life, and was so poor that He had to trust in the kind offices of a friend to supply His physical needs, and in the palm branches of the peasant crowd for His palfrey and the carpeting of His Royal Procession; but as we watch it pass, the lowly triumph swells in proportions until it represents the whole race of mankind; and the generations that preceded His advent, and those that follow, sweep down the Ages of human history, proclaiming and acclaiming Christ as King. (Rev_15:3-4, R.V).

PRAYER
O God, may our hearts indite good matter, that our mouth may speak of our King. Whilst we adore Him as Wonderful may He become to us the Prince of Peace. Enable us to put the government of our lives upon His shoulder, and of His government and of our peace let there be no end. Deliver us from the evil one; for yours is the kingdom and  the power and the glory for ever and ever AMEN.

HAVE YOU THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHIN?

“The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God.”


- Gal_2:20
When the Lord in mercy passed by and saw us in our blood, he first of all said, “Live”; and this he did first, because life is one of the absolutely essential things in spiritual matters, and until it be bestowed we are incapable of partaking in the things of the kingdom. Now the life which grace confers upon the saints at the moment of their quickening is none other than the life of Christ, which, like the sap from the stem, runs into us, the branches, and establishes a living connection between our souls and Jesus. Faith is the grace which perceives this union, having proceeded from it as its first fruit. It is the neck which joins the body of the Church to its all-glorious Head.

“Oh Faith! thou bond of union with the Lord,
Is not this office thine? and thy fit name,
In the economy of gospel types,
And symbols apposite-the Church’s neck;
Identifying her in will and work
With him ascended?”

Faith lays hold upon the Lord Jesus with a firm and determined grasp. She knows his excellence and worth, and no temptation can induce her to repose her trust elsewhere; and Christ Jesus is so delighted with this heavenly grace, that he never ceases to strengthen and sustain her by the loving embrace and all-sufficient support of his eternal arms. Here, then, is established a living, sensible, and delightful union which casts forth streams of love, confidence, sympathy, complacency, and joy, whereof both the bride and bridegroom love to drink. When the soul can evidently perceive this oneness between itself and Christ, the pulse may be felt as beating for both, and the one blood as flowing through the veins of each. Then is the heart as near heaven as it can be on earth, and is prepared for the enjoyment of the most sublime and spiritual kind of fellowship.

He who has the friendship of the world is an enemy to God;

“I came not to send peace on earth, but a sword.”

- Mat_10:34
The Christian will be sure to make enemies. It will be one of his objects to make none; but if to do the right, and to believe the true, should cause him to lose every earthly friend, he will count it but a small loss, since his great Friend in heaven will be yet more friendly, and reveal himself to him more graciously than ever. O you who have taken up His cross, know you not what your Master said? “I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother; and a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” Christ is the great Peacemaker; but before peace, he brings war. Where the light comes, the darkness must retire. Where truth is, the lie must flee; or, if it abides, there must be a stern conflict, for the truth cannot and will not lower its standard, and the lie must be trodden under foot.

If you follow Christ, you shall have all the dogs of the world yelping at your heels. If you would live so as to stand the test of the last tribunal, depend upon it the world will not speak well of you. He who has the friendship of the world is an enemy to God; but if you are true and faithful to the Most High, men will resent your unflinching fidelity, since it is a testimony against their iniquities. Fearless of all consequences, you must do the right. You will need the courage of a lion unhesitatingly to pursue a course which shall turn your best friend into your fiercest foe; but for the love of Jesus you must thus be courageous. For the truth’s sake to hazard reputation and affection, is such a deed that to do it constantly you will need a degree of moral principle which only the Spirit of God can work in you; yet turn not your back like a coward, but play the man. Follow right manfully in your Master’s steps, for he has traversed this rough way before you. Better a brief warfare and eternal rest, than false peace and everlasting torment.

LORD GIVE ME A PRAYING SPIRIT

fruit produced by the good ground

Matthew 13:23

Good ground - That which had depth of mould, was well ploughed, and well weeded.
Is he that hears - Who diligently attends the ministry of the word.
And understands it - Lays the subject to heart, deeply weighing its nature, design, and importance.
Which also bears fruit - His fruitfulness being an almost necessary consequence of his thus laying the Divine message to heart. Let it be observed, that to hear, to understand, and to bring forth fruit, are the three grand evidences of a genuine believer. He who does not hear the word of wisdom cannot understand what makes for his peace; and he who does not understand what the Gospel requires him to be and to perform, cannot bring forth fruit; and he who is not fruitful, very fruitful, cannot be a disciple of Christ - see Joh_15:8; and he who is not Christ’s disciple cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

From the different portions of fruit produced by the good ground, a hundred, sixty, and thirty, we may learn that all sound believers are not equally fruitful; all hear, understand, and bring forth fruit, but not in the same degrees-occasioned, partly, by their situation and circumstances not allowing them such extensive opportunities of receiving and doing good; and, partly, by lack of mental capacity - for every mind is not equally improvable.

Let it be farther observed that the unfruitfulness of the different lands was not owing to bad seed or an unskilful sower - the same sower sows the same seed in all, and with the same gracious design - but it is unfruitful in many because they are careless, inattentive, and worldly-minded.

But is not the ground naturally bad in every heart? Undoubtedly. And can any but God make it good? None. But it is your business, when you hear of the justice and mercy of God, to implore him to work in you that which is pleasing in His sight. No man shall be condemned because he did not change his own heart, but because he did not 'Cry to God' to change it, who gave him His Holy Spirit for this very purpose, and which he, by his worldly-mindedness and impiety, quenched. Whoso hath ears to hear let him hear: and may the Lord save the reader from an impenitent and unfruitful heart!